When I’m done, I crane my neck, looking out of the window to see if I can spot the viewing lounge, wondering if Kath and her husband Mark and my two favourite people in the world—their newborn twins, Annie and Daisy—have stayed to watch the plane leave. I’d offered to catch a cab out to the airport, but Kath had insisted that they take me—they were hunting for an excuse to go on their first big outing as a family and I was it. I squint, scanning the airport windows. They might still be here. I don’t think they’ll be rushing home after all the effort it had taken to get to the airport in the first place.
In order to see me off they’d had to get up early and practise assembling and disassembling what we’d come to call the mega-stroller of death and destruction. They’d been trying to reach the record time of a five-minute set-up, but so far couldn’t break the seven-minute barrier.
Frankly, crossing the carpeted airport floor, we’d looked as if the five of us were about to make a trek through the Himalayas rather than one of us was flying to London.
I still had to step back in wonder every time I saw that stroller. You couldn’t even call it a stroller, in my opinion. I went shopping with Kath and Mark to buy the thing and quickly became stroller-flabbergasted. First of all, there were whole shops devoted to the things. Just to strollers! Then there was the choice these shops offered. There were strollers for running and strollers for shopping, and even strollers with little flags that you pulled along behind your mountain bike.
The one Kath and Mark finally decided on was the biggest smash-’em-up-derby stroller of them all. Hence the name—the mega-stroller of death and destruction. The mega—for short—was a double seater that, like eighties limos, seemed to go on for ever, with a tray down at the bottom that you could carry things in—like three weeks’ worth of groceries, if you had to—and all kinds of things that flipped in and out. It probably even had indicators and side mirrors that I hadn’t discovered yet.
I bought them a bumper sticker for it—‘This is my other car’.
Still, there obviously wasn’t enough room for everything in that stroller, because as we’d made our way towards Immigration, Mark had had to stop every so often to pick up the bits and pieces he was losing off the contraption as he went. A teddy bear here, a Teletubby there. Annie and Daisy had simply gurgled happily.
‘Here we are,’ Mark had said, pulling up the stroller in front of my stop. I’d given Kath a hug then. And Mark a hug. And Annie and Daisy a kiss. And then another kiss. And then another one.
I was going to miss the twins terribly. I’d prepared myself for it because I knew I’d got all too used to having them around for the last four weeks. The whole four weeks of Annie and Daisy’s lives. Not having them as my sun—the thing my eating and sleeping and just about everything revolved around every day—was going to feel strange. Very strange indeed.
I gave them both one last kiss. ‘I’m going to miss you guys,’ I said, taking one each of their tiny hands.
‘Ring me when I’m up at four a.m. feeding them and I’ll swap places with you,’ Kath groaned.
I looked up at her and laughed. She didn’t mean it. But then I took another glance. Noticed the bags underneath her eyes. OK, so she might mean it a little bit.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, giving Kath and Mark one quick, last hug. ‘Thanks so much. For everything…’
‘Stop it,’ Mark said. ‘We should be thanking you. You’ve been a huge help this month.’
‘Go on.’ Kath urged me over to the Immigration queue. ‘Have a good time. Enjoy yourself. And don’t think about…things. Just have fun.
‘And call us as soon as you get off the plane,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘OK, I will.’ I turned around and headed off. I didn’t look at the twins again, or I knew, just knew, they’d give me one of their silly googly smiles and I’d end up kissing them for ever. Such a sucker.
But that’s the way aunts are supposed to be, isn’t it? Well, honorary aunts, anyway. I’m really a cousin, but because of my age, and the amount I hang around them, I’ve been promoted to the glorious rank and title of Auntie Charlie. Or Auntie Charlotte, if they’re going to be a picky pair and insist on the name I was lumped with—after my grandmother—which I’m sure they won’t.
Because cool Auntie Charlie will make sure of that.
I’m planning on being the bad auntie, you see. The one who lets them have double ice-cream cones and takes them to get their ears pierced when they’re staying on holiday even though they’re not supposed to get them done till they’re thirteen. The popular auntie.
I did the bag in the X-ray machine thing, then made my way through uneventfully to line up and have my passport stamped. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn back, I told myself.
So of course I turned back. Looked for the four of them. Saw them. Waved. They waved back. I waved a bit more, then turned back again to take a step forward as someone left the queue.
And that was it. When I turned around again I couldn’t see them any more.
Instantly I felt a pang of loss for a family that wasn’t really my own, but who treated me just as if I were.
Like this trip, for instance. A present from Kath and Mark. And, I guess, sort of from my mum. A present that I’d only received last night. They’d sat me down after dinner and given me the envelope.
‘For you.’ Kath had passed it to me without any great aplomb. Almost as if it were just a piece of mail I’d overlooked. ‘You don’t have any plans for the weekend, do you?’ she’d said.
I’d taken the envelope from her. ‘No—why?’
‘Open it and see.’
I’d opened it up…and then I’d almost died.
It was a plane ticket. And an itinerary. For me. For tomorrow.
Mark was standing beside Kath when I looked up again. I opened my mouth to begin to say something to them, but nothing came out. I tried again, opening and shutting it, my tongue suddenly feeling ten times larger than usual. Kath gave me a glass of water and, after drinking it in its entirety, I was able to speak again. Not much, however.
‘But, why?’ was all I could come out with.
So they told me. The trip was just something they thought I deserved. Something they’d heard me talk about—something they’d been thinking would be good for me for a while and were waiting for me to get around to. But I hadn’t. So they had. It wasn’t much—not a big trip, they said, and they’d left the ticket home open, so I could stay on if I felt like it. They added that if I was wise I’d take it and run, as there wasn’t going to be much sleep going on in the house for probably quite some time.
Not much—not a big trip. I couldn’t believe they’d said that. Here they were, just having had not one baby but two, and they were paying large sums of money over to travel agents…for me. I had to come right out and say it. I was going to pay for it. I’d give them the money back. I’d meant to book something myself, but kept putting it off.
And that was when Kath spoke up, cutting me off. ‘It’s, um, from your mum, Charlie,’ she said. ‘She gave me some money for incidentals. Things you might need but that you might not know you need, if that makes any sense.’
The three of us had simply looked at each other, blinking, for a bit. Until, that was, Kath’s eyes slid over to Mark and she sighed. ‘And now it’s probably time for Mark to apologise for the trip he chose.’
Mark had got a very sheepish air about him then. ‘I thought you were meant to be having fun. And this looked like fun. To me, anyway.’
I checked the itinerary more closely.